There are many assets above ground and below ground that need to be protected and avoided. Included in these assets are utility lines and components and protected areas, such as archeological sites and habitat of endangered species. There are millions of miles of utility lines around the world, some buried and some above ground. These utility lines include, without limitation, electric power lines, telephone lines, water lines, sewer lines, fiber-optic cable lines, natural gas transmission lines, natural gas distribution lines, and utility lines for transporting hazardous liquids.
Every year incidents occur in which mobile ground breaking equipment comes in contact with utility lines with costly results in loss of life and/or loss of money. In order to understand the full impact of such incidents, one would have to also include environmental damage and economic loss as a result of a service disruption.
There have been many attempts to address damage prevention when groundbreaking equipment is used around utilities and other assets that need protection. Examples of these attempts include marking the location of a utility by painted lines, making a record of the location of the utility lines as the line was placed in the earth or generating data identifying the location of the utility using a fixed object, such as the curbing of a road. In addition, some techniques record the location of a facility as the record to compare to the location of a piece of ground breaking equipment. The location of a utility may be acquired by underground imaging, which may be accomplished by the use of ground penetrating radar or other means.